Peter Mollica loves Fraser firs. I mean really loves them. This is a good thing, since he sells about 10,000 of them every year. His Christmas tree farm sits right on the banks of the Connecticut River in Springfield.
Among the Fraser fir’s virtues, Mollica says, are its rounded needles (so you don’t get pricked when you touch it), its classic, formal shape (stiff branches give it that standing-at-attention look), a pleasant smell, and excellent needle retention.
Fraser firs are fussy trees. They require rich, well-drained soil. In nature they find this soil in the Great Smokey Mountains, particularly in North Carolina, but they only grow above 3,000 feet there. “They hate hot weather,” Mollica explains.
But the Frasers are thriving on Mollica’s farm. Mollica credits about 12 feet of topsoil (for richness) over a deep layer of sand and gravel (for drainage), plus Vermont’s relatively cool summers, for making his farm such a great place to grow a tree that is so far from home.
Whether you have a Christmas tree in your living room or just brush past one at the bank or the supermarket, this is an incredible season of trees indoors. When that tree is real, it brings a bit of the natural world (sometimes quite a bit of the natural world) inside with it.
Robins, mockingbirds, and goldfinches thrive on his farm, Mollica says. The trees’ sheared branches make an extra-dense hiding spot for the birds’ nests. He gives the mockingbirds wide berth (they are aggressively territorial), but sometimes he tries to follow a robin that has flown into one of his trees. Often the nests are just too well hidden to see, he says.
The most popular Christmas tree in America is the Scotch pine, or Scots pine. Yes, it is native to Scotland and other parts of Europe and Asia, but it is now grown in the U.S. It’s popular with growers because it finds plantation life agreeable and reaches Christmas tree height (6 to 10 feet) in six to eight years. (Frasers take about 15 years.)
Mollica remembers when getting a Christmas tree meant going into the woods and cutting one. Even for people who buy their trees, this tradition lives on in regional preferences for Christmas trees. In the South, eastern red cedars are big. In the West, the Douglas fir (not a true fir) is very popular. Here in northern New England, Mollica says, balsam firs and white pines are popular, which is not surprising, since both are found in our woods. (White pines are even more popular in the mid-Atlantic states, Mollica says.)
Generally, pines have long, thin needles that grow in bundles. It’s kind of a tasseled look. When you see a white pine, you will know it’s a pine. It has a classic pine’s long needles growing in bundles of five. The scotch pine is trickier. It can have short needles, which grow in bundles of two. You could, perhaps, mistake it for a spruce.
The spruce most commonly sold as a Christmas tree in our area is the white spruce. Like all spruces, it has short, flat needles with sharp points. White spruce needles tend to grow on the top of the twig, like half a bottle brush. For me, that bottle brush look tells me I’m looking at a spruce or a fir and not a pine.
Telling a fir from a spruce can be tricky. As a Christmas tree farmer, Mollica relies on the fact that fir needles have rounded tips while spruce needles are sharp. Telling the two popular Christmas firs from each other, though, is another story.
Balsam firs and Fraser firs look so much alike that even the people at the Christmas tree nursery have trouble telling them apart. There will always be a few balsam seedlings mixed in with the 10,000 Fraser fir seedlings Mollica orders each year. Balsam firs are found here and there among the Frasers on the farm.
The difference? Mollica thinks balsam firs’ softer branches give them, “a less formal, laid-back, California look.” Comparing the needles side by side, the Fraser firs’ have two broad, silvery white stripes on the bottom, while balsam firs’ have two narrow white stripes underneath.
Every tree has a story to tell, and Christmas trees are no exception. Is it a native species? Introduced? Grown here? Trucked in? You can ask, when and if you buy. Otherwise, a close look may start to tell the story that began outdoors and ended in a very happy holiday.